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Mika Björklund - Risen [wh066]

by: Mika Björklund

Publication date: 0000-00-00 00:00:00
Usage: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
Topics: Ambient/noise, Electroacoustic, Minimalism, Abstract, Dark Ambient
Item Size: 83.1M

The album Risen consists a pair of long-form works by Mika Björklund, a young Finnish sound artist who has previously released Nocturne [wh054] on Webbed Hand. This is definitely headphones-in-the-dark music -- real introvert listening. These two tracks begin in a similar manner, but soon diverge and express many different moods and textures.

Risen

"The concept is to play with different kinds of ambient music, I've tried to get a feeling of progression from dark to light, past to future and so forth. So there's both dark ambient and ambient. Styles range from ambient chiptune (using only simple waveforms and white noise) to obscure dark ambient. The works used are all mine except one in the end called "Singularity". Singularity is made by finnish underground ambient artist Mecha and is used with his permission. It gets quite dramatic in the middle, but it's more mellow and buoyant in the end."

-- Mika Björklund

Harmaa hiljaisuus

"Harmaa = Grey
hiljaisuus = silence

"The silence in Harmaa hiljaisuus is more about mood than anything else. It's about visual silence and silence of the mind, clarity and calm observation. Silence is a relative rather than an absolute, so it's not so much about actual silence, but rather about silence in metaphorical sense. To me "Harmaa hiljaisuus" is about two things (and I've drawn a lot of the inspiration from these): Urban decay and grey clouds. There are a great number of Urban exploration sites on the net which I have been browsing. Abandoned and forgotten places are usually visually silent, and the beauty found in those places is unconventional - that is also an interesting analogy to ambient music. Those are the moods I've tried to convey here.

"For some reason I find grey clouds very inspiring. Usually grey is seen as a boring and dull color. I don't think so at all."

-- Mika Björklund

01 Risen 00:30:00
02 Harmaa hiljaisuus 00:30:00

Recorded and produced by Mika Björklund
Cover image by Mika Björklund

Thank you for listening to this Webbed Hand Records release. Please visit the WHR homepage to explore our complete catalog of experimental and ambient recordings. All of our music is free to download, but we'd be very grateful if you could make a small donation (via Paypal) to help with the costs of maintaining a netlabel.

Notes

Mark Teppo of Igloo magazine has written a very nice review of this album:

"Two long tracks make up Risen, an ambient record by Finnish artist Mika Björklund. After a long day of active duty (read anything that requires you to be upright for longer than an hour), it is nice to bliss out for awhile to introvert music -- tunes that are really meant for solitary headphone listening. It's too damn bad that I can't lie down and type at the same time. "Risen" flows through lengthy cycles, ebbing and flowing like celestial tides, with waves of solar distortion and radio signals. Miniscule bubbles of static ripple through a droning mix while an explorer stumps around behind the scenes, his footsteps like the heavy tread of an aged god ascending the back staircase to Heaven. Eventually, this deity reaches the layer of perpetual sunlight and, leaving the door at the top of the stair open, allows some heavenly strings to drift down to us.

"Harmaa Hiljaisuus" means "grey silence," and whispers around Björklund's fascination with clouds as a source of inspiration. While other see grey as dull and lifeless, Björklund sees it as a transition color -- neither white nor black, simply waiting for the artist to impart direction. Filled with the sound of wind moving across cracked stone and rusted piping, "Harmaa Hiljaisuus" is more ambient than "Risen," more filled with moving air, but is still an equally arresting ambient journey. Very nice.